The official site of author Don Bissett and the Nathan Parker crime novel book series

Paragraph Breaks

Breakers on shore of Lake Michigan

I've always appreciated short paragraphs -- just a few lines long. They're easier to read and digest.

Some apparently prefer a long paragraph writing style. Maybe it's intentional, or perhaps it's just the natural way the person writes. For me, very long paragraphs that fill page after page without a single break and discuss multiple topics are difficult to read. Often they contain an expanding cast of characters and scattered quotation marks, with the verbiage becoming so convoluted and confusing that the reader loses track of who said what, and the reader also begins to lose track of the story line and loses focus on the purpose of the paragraph. Yet the prose continues for page after page without a single break and meanders from one scene to the next, losing the connection to the plot and begins to read like the ramblings of a writer who has lost his way and can't bring himself to get to the point and move on to the next point. And when it is time to stop reading for the night, where do I put the bookmark since there is no break anywhere? So I cram it between two pages knowing that tomorrow I'll have to re-read big chunks of that paragraph to try to get back into the flow of the story, or simply surrender and never finish reading the book, though I feel a sense of loss in not finishing because the story actually seemed good.... blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah........

I am certainly not a writing expert, but do know what I prefer to read. So if you are inclined to write very long paragraphs, please, for the sake of your reader, consider using